The invention relates to plastic bags. In particular, the invention relates to plastic bags having a construction with a flap construction on both sides. The plastic bag is particularly useful on conjunction with an animal waste collection device that is used for collecting, storing, and disposing of the animal waste.
It has been said that the American population is outnumbered by their pets. Americans are thought to be outnumbered by our pet dogs alone, which may number more than 250 million by some estimates. As these pet numbers increase, the public demand for animal regulation increases correspondingly, responsive to the public health and safety concerns related to the high population of pet animals.
Generally, pet owners residing in municipal regions are subject to ordinances requiring that their animals be leashed at all times in public, and restrained in private to prevent uncontrolled wandering. Moreover, some municipalities, especially large cities have promulgated so-called “pooper-scooper” ordinances. These ordinances require pet owners to accept personal responsibility for collection and disposition of the waste material produced by their pet animals. A typical ordinance instituted recently provides that to avoid criminal charges, you must immediately place the waste in a plastic bag, securely tied, and then place it in a solid waste container. The enforcement of some ordinance specifies fines, jail time, and probation as penalty for violation.
When pet owners are subject to both leash-laws and pooper-scooper ordinances, the owner is obliged to (a) “walk” their pet on a leash and (b) retrieve and dispose of pet wastes when and where the animal decides to relieve itself. This distasteful routine is all too familiar to all responsible dog owners and many bystanders. Because of the distastefulness of this routine, less responsible dog owners may leave the waste where it lies. A local legislative body may respond to this problem by instituting severe sanctions for such behavior, such as the type of penalties exemplified above. Practitioners in the art respond to the problem by proposing means designed to minimize the unpleasantness of the gathering and disposal of such animal waste.
For instance, the term “pooper-scooper” originally denominated a long-handled mechanical apparatus, well-known in the art. A pooper-scooper is used for retrieving dog wastes without soiling the owners' hands. Unfortunately, the first such pooper-scoopers were large and awkwardly-configured devices that were inconvenient to carry and often soiled in use. In using this or later versions and designs of pooper-scoopers, a rigid tray or scoop is employed to scoop up the waste material as best as possible. This design often soiled both the vicinity of the waste and the tray itself. Further, this design and others often require use of both hands, which is extremely difficult when holding a pet's leash.
Even if a disposable bag is placed within the tray, few means are provided for cleanly gathering all of the waste material into the bag. This omission usually obliges the user to employ a twig, branch, or other readily-available item as a tool or scraper for manipulating the waste material from its lying position into the bag.
Responsive to this problem, it has been proposed to add a spring-loaded clip to the bottom of a scoop for retaining a disposable plastic bag in position while “scooping” the waste material. While such an improvement may assist in solving the problem of holding the disposable bag in position for use, it may not do anything to improve the gathering operation. The user may still be obliged to grab the nearest twig or other suitable disposable scraper to gather the material into the bag. As every pet owner knows, a simple unaided scooping action relying on collection by gravity alone is not sufficient to gather and retain looser material into a bag held only on one side.
Accordingly, pet-owners (and others) are often confronted with pet waste that can be collected using only an awkward scoop or shovel or, worse, a simple plastic bag for use together with whatever other “tools” may be afforded by their immediate environment. Human nature being what it is, such unpleasant pet waste is commonly left where it lies, creating social, public-health, and legal problems for the pet owner and others. Other solutions known in the art such as, but not limited to, disposable surgical gloves, paper tissues, sandwich bags and the like do little to reduce the well-known unpleasantness of the pet sanitation task. None of these alternatives provides for simple sanitary gathering and bagging of pet waste.
One known bag related “pooper-scooper” is disclosed in Jung (the instant inventor), U.S. Pat. No. 6,237,972, entitled “Animal Waste Collection Device” the entire contents of which are fully incorporated herein by reference. The bag of Jung '972 receives and stores animal waste. The Jung '972 bag comprises a closed and open end and a slot that is complementary to the slot-like aperture where the open end of the bag is complementary to the elongated cylindrical member. The open end of the bag can be secured to one end of an elongated cylindrical member of the Animal Waste Collection Device and a closure member of the Animal Waste Collection Device provides access to the interior of the bag when an actuator assembly moves the closure member to an open position for collecting waste.